HTML COLS, ROWS - HTML Code Tutorial

HTML COLS, ROWS - HTML Code Tutorial
COLS indicates how many characters (not pixels) wide the text area should be. ROWS indicates how many rows should be in the text area. Both attributes are required in the <TEXTAREA ...> tag. These attributes do not set any limit on how much can be typed in, just how much of the textarea is visible.

While the values you choose depend on the situation, we usually find that COLS and ROWS ( <TEXTAREA NAME="some" COLS=50 ROWS=5></TEXTAREA> ) give a nice typing space without taking up too much page.